What’s in a name? Everything!

The world renowned scientists in Israel have 30+ years of verifiable studies showing that CBD oil significantly reduces (and in some cases erases) chronic pain with no side-affects, and it is not addictive.

Other studies around the world have had the same results. Even medical studies here in Australia.

Yet we (those of us who suffer daily, with no or very little quality of life) are not allowed to access it because ‘wowsers’ hear the letters CBD and react with, “That’s cannabis! You just want to get high! Just like those 60s hippies!”

CBD (cannabis oil) contains NO THC, the stuff that gives you the high, so NO we CANNOT get high, we just want our chronic, debilitating pain gone. Oh, and to live a life approaching normal would be a huge bonus, thanks.

So if it’s the name that is causing all this resistance, why not change it? Call it something in Latin, people seem to love that. Or just something unpronounceable and therefore important-sounding like all the other drugs on the market, that are addictive and have a list of side-affects that take fifteen minutes to read and over two hours to understand. Then there would be no overreaction.

If they changed the name to simply ‘vitamin oil’ there would be no problem. Vitamins are easily imported, advertised and sold with claims that they ‘may’ assist every sickness known to man. I am sure it would be government approved within days, if government approval was even required.

But it currently has the name ‘cannabis’ in it so I must be a strungout hippie, chasing a high.

It’s all in the name.

People cannot get past the image that pops into their head when you say ‘cannabis’, of smoke filled rooms and people rolling around in their own psychedelic world. Yes, it should be their problem and not mine, but I have been in constant pain for over two years now because people cannot let go of their deep-seated biases.

I must admit that, until I became chronically ill, I probably would have thought the same – hippies out to legalise their highs from smoking weed.

It is a very deep-seated stereotype.

So I cannot blame anyone or get angry, there isn’t any point. I will, however, continue to write about it here and to my local politicians because chronic full body pain, with not a second of rest in over two years, can really get you down.

Then there is the massive financial saving.

I read daily of people with my condition, or worse, calling ambulances and going to hospital so they can be placed on higher pain medication for a while. Each visit costs you, the Australian taxpayer, thousands of dollars and clogs up an already stretched health system.

Personally, over the next few years I could save you all tens of thousands of dollars if I was allowed to buy what I know helps my condition.

Yes I can try jumping through hoops and attempt to navigate a mountain of red tape (and I really mean a mountain because I have seen it), but that costs a fortune in time and money (a medical professional has to fill it out, paid by Medicare out of our tax dollars) and I don’t think I would survive the stress.

Red Tape. If only we could grow cannabis oil as quickly as Red Tape, everyone in pain would find instant relief.

The money we sufferers would save the government in unnecessary ambulance callouts, hospital stays and subsidised (addictive) painkillers would be in the millions. Money I am sure you would rather the government spent on other things, or even better returned to your pocket.

Which leads me to my final point. With dozens (closer to hundreds now) of studies over decades as proof that CBD oil is safe, not addictive, not capable of giving anyone a high and yet people are stopping us from accessing it, can we sue these people for the pain and suffering we go through every day?

It is criminal, in my pain-filled opinion, that I know what helps my chronic pain, I’m prepared to pay for it myself and save the government thousands in subsidised medicine, but I cannot buy it because the government here disallows anyone to import it, or sell it without a pathetic initial prescription that lasts just two months.

Alas it is all in a name. How about we call the oil Fred? Fred oil sounds pretty harmless to me.